Barrier Breaking Belief - A Zach weinberg Speech

Written by Zach Weinberg, 03/30/2025

A special congradulations to Zach who placed 1st (by default) in Canada for the ESU International speaking competition! He will be traveling to London this April to represent our country.... GO ZACH! (Our thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Burkett who will be chapperoning our champ.)

     What if aging was, at least in part, just a product of what we’ve been told it will be. Your memory will fade, vision will fail, hearing will decline and your mobility will be limited. These physical and mental challenges slow and impair our lives as we grow older. But, what if I told you this didn’t have to be the case?

As we age we face unique challenges and problems in our lives. We all have or will look in the mirror and criticize ourselves by saying things like: Why is my face all wrinkly, how come my back hurts so much and if you're like me you may also say, why do I look so tired?

These labels, these internal narratives, are the barriers which confine us. 

On the surface, Ophelia must be correct when she says "We know what we are, but know not what we may be." After all, how can anyone know the future? But what if the opposite was true? What if by KNOWING, deep down, what we will become--that being “over-the-hill” was a gift, not a curse and that our bodies WON’T fail us as we grow old, were enough to--at least to some extent-- predict what our future selves will be? What if our beliefs shaped our future reality?

For years, we, in the West, have been taught that the mind and body are separate. That our thoughts and physical selves operate in isolation. However, you might be surprised to learn that science has long been trying to prove otherwise. As it turns out, our bodies don’t just react to the world around us—they respond to the world we believe in.

Dr. Ellen Langer, a psychologist at Harvard University, has explored the connection between the mind and body and how our thoughts, beliefs and societal norms impact how we age, function and how well we live.

In 1979, Ellen Langer’s Counterclockwise study took a group of elderly men to a retreat designed to recreate 1959. Everything—from the décor to the media—matched that era, and the men were instructed to speak and act as if they were living 20 years earlier. Even mirrors were removed to reinforce the illusion. The question: Could mentally turning back time also reverse aging physically? Incredibly, after just one week, the men showed improvements in memory, hearing, flexibility, and dexterity. So maybe the key to living longer and healthier isn’t in a magic pill—it’s in how we think about getting older.

In Langer’s Mind-Set Matters study, she worked with 84 hotel housekeepers across seven hotels. Despite performing physically demanding tasks daily, 67% didn’t see their work as exercise. Langer measured their health indicators—BMI, blood pressure, and body fat—then split them into two groups. One group was informed that their work met the Surgeon General’s exercise guidelines, while the other group received no information. A month later, despite no changes in behaviour, the informed group saw significant health improvements: lower BMI, reduced body fat, and a 10% decrease in blood pressure. The control group saw no change. The takeaway? Simply believing you’re exercising may be enough to trigger real physical improvements.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can just fall asleep dreaming of working out and wake up with a six-pack (trust me, I’ve tried). But it does suggest, our brains are capable of far more than just keeping us alive—they have the power to shape our future. By practicing mindfulness and truly engaging with our daily actions, we can take control of our lives rather than letting life control us.

So, perhaps instead of thinking of our futures as a vast unknown, we should act as if we know what they will be...I, for one, will be enjoying my 20/20 vision, perfect hearing and photographic memory as I wind down my NHL career at the age of 65.

Because the truth is, we’re not just what we think we are. We’re who we decide to become.